With partnerships between landowners, the government and businesses, South Africa can invest in its wetlands and boost the country’s potable water reserves.
The enthusiasm for recycling water that Australians had at the height of the drought little more than a decade ago has waned.
Shaney Balcombe/AAP
Cities relied entirely on conserving and recycling water to get through the last big drought. We now have desalination plants, but getting the most out of our water reserves still makes sense.
Chemicals poured down the sink or pumped into the atmosphere can eventually end up in the groundwater, which means less available fresh water for us to use.
Flickr/Kamil Porembiński
While making small volumes of pure water in a lab is possible, it’s not practical. The reaction is expensive, releases lots of energy, and can cause really massive explosions.
Developing a map of African countries’ water poverty levels offers a transparent analysis for policymakers, governments and organisations that deal with water issues.
Informal settlements in Cape Town only use 4.7% of the city’s water.
Flickr/Blackwych
Australian cities have turned to some very costly solutions when water is scarce. But as the world’s second-highest users of water per person, more efficient use and recycling are key.
Low levels at Cape Town’s Theewaterskloof Dam. Smart meters could slow water loss.
Reuters/Mike Hutchings
Smart meters may help water saving initiatives as the drought persists in South Africa’s Western Cape. It can help those who need achieve saving targets.
Cape Town is doing an outstanding job of managing residential water use.
EPA/Nic Bothma
There is an increasing demand for water in cities like Cape Town. The current drought exacerbates this. But there are ways to use and save water sustainably.
Lake Powell, photographed April 12, 2017. The white ‘bathtub ring’ at the cliff base indicates how much higher the lake reached at its peak, nearly 100 feet above the current level.
Patti Weeks
The Colorado River supplies water to millions of people and irrigates thousands of miles of farmland. New research warns that climate change is likely to magnify droughts in the Colorado Basin.
For the Barkindji people, the Darling River has been a symbol of Aboriginal survival since colonial times. Now, the once busy NSW town of Wilcannia is in danger of losing its water.
Oroville Dam in California, where water levels had fallen 30% by 2014.
Dam image from www.shutterstock.com
With a future of droughts looming for the US West, Utah’s Wasatch watershed offers a good model that combines conservation with nature-based recreation.
The Murray-Darling: a complex river system with a complex set of regulations to match.
AAP Image/Caroline Duncan Photography
Water isn’t straightforward. And by putting the Nationals in charge of policy for water assets like the Murray-Darling Basin, the government will trigger a complex round of bureaucratic musical chairs.
Children from a village in Papua New Guinea’s Western Highlands Province stand in one of countless sweet potato gardens destroyed by frost across the country, August 2015.
Kud Sitango
Papua New Guinea is now facing a drought and frosts that look set to be worse than 1997, when hundreds of people died. So how can memories of 1997 save lives over the next few months?
Universities on the leading edge.
John Morgan/flickr
Samual A. Graham Dean, and William B. Stapp Collegiate Professor of Environmental Education, School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan